Linguine with Slow Cooked Chicken and Bordeaux Wine Pairing

20th February 2019

This month, I was invited by Millesima to taste a selection of their fine wines and pair one of them with a dish of my choice. Red wines go wonderfully with rich pasta dishes, so I chose a well balanced Bordeaux to pair with Linguine with rosemary and slow cooked chicken sauce. Read on to learn more about Millesima and to get the full recipe.

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I love to drink a glass of red wine with dinner on occasion, not every day. I like to buy good bottles of wine and save them for a special meal: a dish I cooked for my family and friends.

I don’t like buying wine from the supermarket. It’s overwhelming to pick a wine from shelves upon shelves stocked with bottles, but also it is hard to discern what is good and what is not. I never buy coffee from the supermarket: I buy it from speciality roasters. So why should wine shopping be any different? I buy wine from the experts: either from the winery itself (when I have the chance to visit one) or a specialised online wine retailer. Online shopping allows me the time to research labels, compare prices and read reviews of the different producers and vintages.

Millesima is a French wine merchant and top online retailer for En primeur and fine wines. They have one of the most comprehensive selections of fines wines from France and from around in the world.

All the wines sold by Millesima are purchased by the merchant directly and exclusively from the producing estates. This way, they can guarantee the quality and the authenticity of each bottle sold. The bottles are then stored in the Millesima wine cellars, situated in the heart of Bordeaux. From there, they are shipped to private customers everywhere in the world.

Millesima’s core offer focuses on wines from France, after all their cellar has been in the heart of Bordeaux for the past two hundred years. On the website, you will also find a good selection of wines from Greece, Portugal, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, USA and China.

What I like the most about shopping on Millesima, aside from the vast choice of labels, is that you can filter your search not just by origin, price, wine colour and grape variety. You can search also by classification, vintage, sweetness and environment (eg. biodynamic wines, organic wines or sustainable viticulture).

I was offered the chance to create my own tasting case of six bottles. I chose mostly red wines, ranging from £10 (Château Beaulieu Comtes de Tastes 2016) to £23 (Château Peyrabon 2008) a bottle. The total bill came to £100 for the six bottles, plus £20 shipping costs, and I received the wines within two weeks.

I completed my tasting case with one white wine from Alsace (Riesling 2017 from Domaine Marcel Deiss) and a rosé wine from Provence (Domaines Bunan: Bélouvé 2015), which I plan to drink, chilled, on a warm summer day.

Linguine with Rosemary and Slow Cooked Chicken

For my wine pairing, I chose a Bordeaux wine from Château Beaulieu Comtes de Tastes 2016. The dish I paired it with is Linguine with chicken drumsticks and thighs, slowly cooked overnight with chopped tomatoes and a little bit of the red wine. The result was a rich and aromatic pasta dish that I served for a Sunday lunch with my husband and brother. We all loved it and I know I will be making this recipe again and again.

I am fairly new to cooking with a slow cooker, so if you have any great recipes to recommend, please share them in the comments! I used to own one a few years ago and made a few recipes with it, including this apple butter galette and a few of Sabrina Ghayour meat dishes from her first book Persiana. I wasn’t using my slow cooker often enough, so I gave it away… until this month when (to the insistence of my husband, no less!) I decided to buy a new one.

I have adapted the original recipe by Julia Frey, changed the doses a bit and used a long pasta (linguine) simply because I craved it. Twirling a fork around in a plate full of linguine gives a lot of joy! Short pasta would work perfectly in this dish, though: try it with rigatoni, conchiglie or penne.

Ingredients

240g linguine pasta

540g chicken (2 drumsticks and 2 thighs)

1tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 largecarrot, peeled and diced

2celery stalks,diced

1 whiteonion,chopped finely

2clovesgarlic,crushed

2sprigs fresh rosemary (plus more for serving)

600g (1 1/2 can) chopped tomatoes

125ml red wine

salt and pepper

Parmesan cheese, grated (for serving)

Preparation

Heat the olive oil in a large pan and sauté the onion with carrots and celery on a low / medium heat for about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and rosemary. Cook for another 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the skin from the chicken and season it with salt and pepper. In a slow cooker, combine the sautéed vegetables, chicken, chopped tomatoes and red wine.

Set your slow cooker to low and cook for about eight hours. Switch the cooker off. Remove the chicken drumsticks and thighs from the slow cooker and place on a shopping board to remove the bones and shred the chicken. The meat will be very soft, so you can use your hands. Return the meat to the slow cooker, mix thoroughly with the sauce and – if needed – add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cook the pasta according to package instructions (usually around 11 minutes for dry pasta). Drain the pasta and combine it with the chicken sauce. Serve immediately with grated cheese.

Please note: I have a sear and stew slow cooker, so I can cook the chicken from start to finish in the same cooking pot. If your slow cooker cannot be used on the stove, you will need to use a large pan first and the slow cooker after.

Disclaimer: this post is a paid partnership with Millesima. All opinions are my own.